They touch your heart, as well
as convince your judgment. But I neither saw them in their true light
nor in their full extent before I fell into doubt; so that they were
unable to make up for the deficiency in the external evidences, and to
check my growing tendency to unbelief.
19. There were other influences that helped me down to unbelief.
Negative criticism, pulling things to pieces with a view to find faults,
to which our modern philosophers give the fine name of _Analysis_, tends
to cause doubt about every thing. It eats out of one the very soul of
truth, of love, and of faith. It tends naturally to kill all our good
instincts and natural affections, and to render not only religion, but
philosophy, virtue and happiness impossible. The Cartesian system of
reasoning, which begins by calling in question every thing, and which
refuses to believe anything without formal proof, is essentially
vicious. The man who adopts it and carries it out thoroughly, must
necessarily become an infidel, not only in religion, but in morals and
philosophy. And he must become intolerably miserable, and destroy
himself, unless, like John S. Mill, he can find out some method of
deceiving himself.
And this is the system of reasoning now in vogue.
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